High sounding woman, maybe laughing (5)
I believe the answer is:
hyena
'high sounding woman maybe laughing' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'high sounding woman' is the wordplay.
'high sounding' becomes 'hy' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'woman' becomes 'ena' (feminine given name).
'hy'+'ena'='HYENA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for hyena that I've seen before include "one to laugh" , "Beast" , "African wild dog" , "Flesh-eating dog with eerie laugh" , "Wolf-like animal with cry like laughter" .)